Part 28 (1/2)
The universal wisdom of the ages bears witness to the fact that a ”moderate poverty” or a ”moderate competence” is the ideal outward state for a man to find himself in. And this ”moderate enjoyment” of food, shelter, clothing, comfort, leisure and emotional happiness, is a thing which, in a scientifically organized communistic society, would be within the reach of even the least efficient.
The gloomy and melancholy argument brought forward by the enemies of ”communism” that under such a condition ”the incentive of private initiative would disappear” and that no other motive could take its place, is an argument based upon the a.s.sumption that human nature derives more inspiration from the idea of dishonourable greed than it derives from the idea of honourable and useful labour; which is an a.s.sumption so wholly opposed to true psychology that it has only to be nakedly stated to be seen in its complete absurdity.
What the psychologist, interested in this abysmal struggle between the idea of communism and the idea of private property, has to note is the nature and character of the particular individual who brings forward this argument of the ”incentive of greed” or the ”initiative” produced by greed. Such an individual will never be found to be a great man of science, or a great artist or scholar or craftsman, or a first-rate engineer, or a highly trained artisan or farmer or builder.
The individual bringing forward this argument of the ”initiative of greed” will invariably be found to be a member of what might be called the ”parasitic cla.s.s.” He will either be an intellectually second-rate minister or politician or lawyer or professor, or he will be a commercial and financial ”middleman,” whose activities are entirely absorbed in the art of exploitation and who has never experienced the sensation of creative work.
If he does not himself belong to the unproductive and parasitic cla.s.s it will be easy to detect in him the unmistakable presence of the emotion of malice. Nowhere is the emotion of malice more entirely in harmony with itself than when it is engaged in attributing base and sordid motives to the energy of human nature.
This monstrous doctrine that human beings _require_ ”the incentive of greed” and that without that incentive or ”initiative”
no one would engage in any kind of creative work, is a doctrine springing directly from the aboriginal malice of the soul; and a doctrine which is refuted every day by every honest, healthy and honourable man and woman.
But all these are, after all, only negative proofs of the inevitable rise, out of the very necessity of love's nature, of the idea of communism. Of all mortal instincts, the possessive instinct is the most insidious and most evil. Love is for ever being perverted and polluted by this thing, and turned from its true essence into something other than itself. This is equally true of love whether such love is directed towards persons or towards ideas or things.
The possessive instinct springing directly from the aboriginal malice is perpetually deceiving itself. Apparently and superficially what it aims at is the eternally ”static.” In other words what it aims at is the retention in everlasting immobility of the person or the idea or the thing into which it has dug its claws.
Thus the maternal instinct, in its evil mood, aims at petrifying and rendering immobile that helpless youthfulness in its offspring which the possessive pa.s.sion finds so provocative and exciting.
Thus the lover in his evil mood, desires that the object of his love should remain in everlasting immobility, an odalisque of eternal reciprocity. That this evil desire takes the form of a longing that the object of his love should eternally escape and eternally be recaptured makes no difference in the basic feeling.
Thus the collector of ”works of art”--a being divided from the real lover of art by an impa.s.sable gulf--derives no pleasure from the beauty of anything until it has become _his_, until he has hidden it away from all the rest of the world. Thus the lover of ”nature,” in his evil mood, derives no pleasure from the fitful magic of gra.s.s and bowers and trees, until he feels happy in the mad illusion that the very body of the earth, even to the centre of the planet, where these things grow, is his ”private” property and is something fixed, permanent, static, unchanging. But all this desire for the eternally ”static” is superficial and self-deceiving.
a.n.a.lysed down to its very depth, what this evil possessive instinct desires is what all malice desires, namely the annihilation of life.
Pretending to itself that it desires to hug to itself, in eternal immobility, the thing it loves, what in its secret essence it really desires is that thing's absolute annihilation. It wants to hug that thing so tightly to itself that the independence of the thing completely vanishes. It wants to destroy all separation between itself and the thing, and all liberty and freedom for the thing. It wants ”to eat the thing up” and draw the thing into its own being.
Its evil desire can never find complete satisfaction until it has ”killed the thing it loves” and buried it within its own ident.i.ty. It is this evil possessive element in s.e.xual love, whether of a man for a woman or a woman for a man, which is the real evil in the s.e.xual pa.s.sion. It is this possessive instinct in maternal love which is the evil element in the love of a mother for a child. Both these evil emotions tend to make war upon life.
The mother, in her secret sub-conscious pa.s.sion, desires to draw back her infant into her womb, and restore it to its pre-natal physiological unity with herself. The lover in his secret evil sub-consciousness, desires to draw his beloved into ever-increasing unity with himself, until the separation between them is at an end and her ident.i.ty is lost in his ident.i.ty.
The final issue, therefore, of this evil instinct of possession, this evil instinct of private property, can never be anything else than death. Death is what the ultimate emotion of malice desires; and death is an actual result of the instinct of possession carried to an extreme limit.
The static immobility and complete ”unchangeableness” which the possessive instinct pretends to itself is all it desires is really therefore nothing but a mask for its desire to destroy. The possessive instinct is, in its profoundest abyss, an amorist of death.
What it secretly loves is the dead; for the dead alone can never defraud it of its satisfaction. Wherever love exercises its creative energy the possessive instinct relaxes its hold. Love expands and diffuses itself. Love projects itself and merges itself The creative impulse is always centrifugal. The indrawing movement, the centripetal movement, is a sign of the presence of that inert malice which would reduce all life to nothingness.
The creative energy of love issues inevitably in the idea of communism. The idea of communism implies the complete abolition of private property; because private property, whether it be property in persons or in things, is essentially evil, is indeed the natural expression of the primordial inert malice, in its hostility to life. Under any realization, in actual existence, of the idea of communism the creative energy finds itself free to expand and dilate. All that heavy clogging burden of ”the personally possessed” being shaken off, the natural fresh shoots of living beauty rise to the surface like the new green growths of spring when the winter's rubble has been washed away by the rain.
The accursed system of private property, rooted in the abysmal malice of the human heart, lies like a dead weight upon every creative impulse. Everything is weighed and judged, everything is valued and measured, in relation to this.
Modern Law is the system of restriction by which we protect private property.
Modern religion is the system of compensation by which we soften the difference between inequalities in private property.
Modern politics is the system of compromise by which public opinion registers its devotion to private property. Modern morality is the system of artificial inhibitions by which the human conscience is perverted into regarding private property as the supreme good.
Modern science is the system by which private property is increased and the uses of it made more complicated. Modern ”truth” is the system of traditional opinion by which the illusion of private property is established as ”responsible” thinking, and ”serious” thinking, and ”ethical” thinking.
Modern art is the system by which what is most gross and vulgar in the popular taste is pandered to in the interests of private property.
The creative energy in modern life is therefore restricted and opposed at almost every point by the evil instinct to possess. Of every new idea the question is asked, ”does it conflict with private property?”